Dick Dale Says:
Rig sent me an interesting video from Dick Dale, The King of Surf Guitar.
He has an excellent point about remaining independant. Any musician will tell you that when you write a song, it comes from your heart and your guts - an audible reflection of your own experiences and emotions. It’s astounding how many artists can’t even play their own music without getting the OK from someone in a suit first. I had the exquisite pleasure of sitting front row center at a Joni Mitchell concert a few years back, and at one point, she started to tell us the story of how she didn’t even own the rights for Blue. I remember watching her literally choking back tears as she recounted tales of music just for the sake of contractual obligation. Other artists have made similiar statements; I remember John Mellencamp’s Rough Harvest album, which completed his contract with Mercury, had a big stamp on the disc itself which I believe said “fulfilled.” And who can forget how Prince used to write Slave on his face at all his shows? It was his way of pointing out that because he doesn’t own any of the rights to his own music, he was really more like the slave machine in a studio, which creates copies of songs from the master recordings.
The battle between artists and their labels has been very interesting to watch as the internet gives musicians more and more venues to promote themselves without going through a label. I don’t know a band that doesn’t have a MySpace page these days, and with good reason: MySpace has more users than Mexico has people. It’s like having an entirely new country to market to - the 11th biggest on earth if it actually existed.
We think Creative Commons licensing takes this one step further, by easily allowing artists to control what rights they keep and what rights they share, for all of their works. I think that in music it’s especially important to share - think how many people have covered just the songs of Robert Johnson, or how many recordings there are of Joni’s “River”. Think of all the samples that make it into your favorite hip hop songs. There are entire genres of music spawned out of single samples. Creative Commons licenses make it possible for artists to allow this kind of positive re-use of their music, without giving up the originals.
For a long time now, Splice has supported the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows people to re-use your music however they would like, as long as they are crediting you on their final product. The feedback we’ve been getting from artists and Splicers alike is that while you love this feature, you would sometimes like to be slightly more restrictive in how people can use your music, particularly in it’s allowed uses commercially. We want everyone - even professional musicians - to feel comfortable sharing their work in this venue. Splice is a great place to promote your band and let your fans get involved in your music. We’re aiming to keep it that way. We took this under careful consideration while planning the new version of Splice. Coming soon to a computer near you will be more choices in how to share your music with others, so that you can do it with confidence.
That’s just how we roll.